Police and rescuers search for Viktoria's body in the mineshaft. Photo / NTV
Police and rescuers search for Viktoria's body in the mineshaft. Photo / NTV
A grieving Russian mother has demanded the return of the death penalty for the 'monster' family friend who is held on suspicion of kidnapping and raping her 12 year old daughter before throwing her alive into a 330 ft (100 metre) deep mineshaft.
Speaking for the first time, Olga Reymertold how as part of the murder investigation she confronted suspect Evgeny Bukharin, 40, a married father-of-two, pleading with him:
"Tell me, where is my child."
Her daughter Viktoria, from Novokuznetsk, died last week from head, neck and chest wounds after being forced into a shaft at a mine where her father was killed in an earlier accident.
"This is the scream of a mother," said Olga, 43, bravely speaking out about her daughter's tragic death.
Viktoria - or Vika - was waiting at the bus stop on the way to see her adult sister when family friend Bukharin is alleged to have offered her a lift on his snowmobile.
The girl vanished but law enforcement authorities allege that Bukharin took her to his own home, where he raped her.
Then he threw her to her death into the mineshaft.
The mother confronted the man suspected of raping and killing her daughter in a detention centre, as part of the probe by the Investigative Committee, equivalent of the FBI, she revealed.
"I saw him face-to-face. He's not a human," she said of the man, her friend from childhood.
"I don't know what to call him. I simply asked him a question.
"Yes, I had a moment of anger, hatred. I asked him: "For God's sake, tell me, where is my child? You have kids of your own, how will they live after this?"
"He simply turned his face away. And then nothing at all."
Fighting back tears, she revealed: "The investigation says that he threw her alive to that shaft."
She told viewers: "Punishment? He's not a human. To shoot him dead seems not harsh enough.
"I don't know. He should have shot himself dead in detention. He was too much a coward to do that - instead he tortures a child.
"How can he live after this? Yes, let them shot him dead, kill him."
Russia no longer uses the death penalty for those guilty of murder.
Police and rescuers search for Viktoria's body in the mineshaft. Photo / NTV
"Such a law should be implemented so that people who do such things are shot dead immediately,' she pleaded, according in an interview in The Siberian Times.
"They are not humans, but monsters who are torturing our children.
"There are children who went missing and haven't been found. There are thousands.....any mother, whatever she's like, it's her child, her blood."
She revealed: "We've known each other since childhood, we grew up in the same street. We were family friends, he has children, and does this.
"I don't know why. Revenge? Revenge for what? What is the child guilty of?
"If it wasn't Vika, somebody else would have been in her place, some other child, someone's child."
